What do you know about your water?

Most of the drinking water in Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Illawarra comes from rainwater collected from natural catchment areas. It's then stored in lakes that are surrounded by some of the most unspoilt native bushland in the region - including world heritage national parks.

WaterNSW manages these catchment areas to ensure they can continue to deliver the best quality water for years to come.

WaterNSW's expertise and monitoring ensures they select the best quality source water for us to filter. Warragamba Dam provides about 80% of greater Sydney's drinking water.

Not all of the water is sourced from lakes. In the North Richmond area, we source water from the Hawkesbury River. In times of drought,
Sydney Desalination Plant uses a process called reverse osmosis to turn seawater into drinking water.

No matter where the water comes from, every drop of drinking water is filtered before it's delivered to your tap.

We filter 100% of your water. Experienced operators, state-of-the-art monitoring and computer controls ensure that your water meets the
Australian Drinking Water Guidelines. These guidelines
are some of the strictest in the world.

Our filtration plants are run by teams of dedicated and experienced people. They're committed to ensuring that people across Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Illawarra region have safe, filtered water every day of the year.

We clean our water filters a few times each week to ensure your water quality is always high.

We add a small amount of chlorine to your drinking water at our filtration plants to protect you from micro-organisms. It's safe and effective. The amounts we add are informed by the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines.

We try to minimise the taste and smell of chlorine in your drinking water. If you still notice it, let your water stand in a jug or put it in the fridge overnight.

We also use other steps to make sure your drinking water remains safe after it leaves the filtration plant. These include:

We're committed to honesty and transparency. If there's ever a threat to Sydney's drinking water quality, we'll work with NSW Health to notify the public immediately. We regularly report to NSW Health on the quality of your water.

We add small amounts of fluoride to your drinking water to strengthen teeth and prevent decay.

We do this in line with guidance from NSW Health. There's a lot of research to support this. In fact, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identifies drinking water fluoridation as one of the top ten public health achievements of the 20th century.

The taste of your water can change from time to time, for various reasons.

Some people are quite sensitive to taste and might sometimes notice metallic, chlorine or earthy tastes and odours.

We need to add small amounts of chlorine to protect the safety of your drinking water. The smell and taste of chlorine will disappear if you put a jug of water on the bench and allow it to stand for an hour - or pop it in the fridge overnight.

If you're concerned by these or any other taste and odour issues, please call us on
13 20 90.

Water hardness refers to the mineral content (particularly calcium and magnesium carbonates) within the water.

Other things can also influence the effects of hardness. These include the type of minerals present, pH, alkalinity, dissolved oxygen and temperature. If these other factors combine, water can become corrosive if it's too soft.

If the water is too hard, it can deposit minerals. This can cause scaling or make it hard to create foam or lather from soap.

Although a single scale can't accurately describe the hardness of water, typically, water is considered:

soft below 60 mg/L

moderately hard between 60 - 120 mg/L

hard between 120 - 200 mg/L

very hard above 200 mg/L.

Sydney's water is 'soft'

On average, our water has a hardness level of about 50 mg/L, so it's considered soft. When water is soft, you don’t need to add as much detergent to get things clean. Also, less soap scum builds up.

Many European brand appliances, such as dishwashers, use a water hardness measurement known as 'millimoles' (shown as mml CaCO3, or mmol/L).

To translate our measurement of mg/L to mmol/L, divide our level by 100.

For example, our water has a hardness level of about 50 mg/L. To convert this figure into millimoles, simply divide 50 by 100, which equals 0.50 mmol/L

How can you save water?

What are the most common reasons for no water supply?

Occasionally we turn the meter tap off to repair your private water pipes. A plumber may also turn it off while working on your property. Please check it's in the 'on' position (turn anti-clockwise like normal household taps).

If you live in a property that shares a water meter, eg a block of units, someone may have turned off the water supply to the entire block to repair a fault. Contact your body corporate or strata management to investigate.

We may be fixing a broken or damaged water main and need to turn off the water supply to fix it. Register for water outage alerts if you'd like us to notify you when we need to turn off the water supply to your property.

What can you do if you have no water and your meter tap is turned on?

Please check our
water supply & service updates map to see if we're working near your property. A problem in a nearby street may affect your property.